Sunday, March 01, 2015

Political dichotomies in election analysis

Among the detailed findings of national
exit polls from biennial elections are results that contrast a
particular demographic group with everyone else. Sometimes these
contrasts are startling and lead to some groups claiming
responsibility for one side's victory.

Who powered President Obama's
reelection in 2012? The GLBT community claims they were decisive, and
the exit polls provide supporting evidence. The 5% of the electorate
who self-identified as GLBT voted for Obama, 76% to 22%. Everyone
else, the other 95%, split dead even, 49-49. Gays provided Obama's
entire margin of victory.

But unmarried individuals of all sexual
orientations could make a similar claim. Singles, comprising 40% of
the 2012 electorate, voted for Obama by 62-35, offsetting married
voters, some 60% of the electorate, who backed Republican Mitt
Romney, 56-42.

The rich-poor dichotomy produced
similar results. While voters from households earning $50,000 or
more, representing a 59% majority of the electorate, backed Romney,
53-45, voters from households earning less than $50.000 carried the
day for Obama, 60-38.

The largest and most cited dichotomy is
the gender gap. For about a generation, women have tended to vote
more Democratic and men more Republican. Since more women usually
vote than men, Democratic victories are often credited to the
majority delivered by women. In 2012, women backed Obama, 55-44,
overcoming men's 52-45 majority for Romney.

On the other hand, white evangelical
Christians take credit for turning the tide in the 2014 midterms.
Comprising 26% of the electorate, they voted for Republican
congressional candidates by 78-20. Everybody else voted for
Democratic candidates by 55-43.

But these statistics, viewed in that
precise vacuum, can be deceiving. Most of these demographic groups
support the same party's candidates election after election for a
generation or more. What is usually more significant is changes in
margin and relative turnout within the groups from one election to
another.

Women, for example, provided a majority
of their votes to Democratic congressional candidates in 2014, but
they weren't the deciding factor they had been in 2012. While the
mainstream press and media usually cite the gender gap as a
Republican problem, it was the male vote that cost Democrats control of the U.S. Senate in 2014. Men increased their Republican majority to 57-41 in
2014, while women's Democratic support slipped to 51-47. And even
though the relative proportions of voting age men and women remained
constant between the two elections, men increased their share of the
electorate by 2 percentage points in 2014, with a corresponding
shrinkage in women's participation.

After “delivering” the 2012
election to Obama, what did gays do in 2014? They voted for
Democrats, 75-24, in 2014, nearly identical to 2012. But it was
“straight” voters who made the difference in 2014. Comprising 96%
of the 2014 electorate, they gave Republican congressional candidates
an 8-point margin (53-45) after having broken even in 2012.

The unmarried individuals of all sexual
orientations who share credit for Obama's 2012 win also share the
blame for the Democrat debacle in the 2014 midterms. Singles'
27-point 2012 margin for Obama shrank to just 12 points for congressional Democrats in 2014, one
of the largest demographic shifts of the midterms. This was
exacerbated by woeful turnout, dropping from 40% of the electorate to
just 37%.

Households with less than $50,000 in
income, who also shared credit for Obama's 2012 win, also shared
blame in 2014. The 11-point margin they gave Democrats in 2014 was
only half the 22-point spread they had produced for Obama, and their
proportion of the electorate dove 5 points in 2014, from 41% to just
36%.

And where were the evangelicals, the
Republican heroes of 2014, two years before? They were there all
along, giving Romney a nearly identical 78-21 win over Obama while
comprising the same 26% of the electorate. But they weren't the
difference-maker in 2012. Obama won because he won all the other
voters, comprising a 74% majority of the electorate, by 23 points,
60-37. In fact, a case can be made that it was those other voters,
not the reliable and consistent evangelicals, who powered the
Republican 2014 win, even though Democrats carried them. That's
because the Democratic advantage with these non-evangelical voters
cratered, from a 23-point spread in 2012 to just 12 points in 2014.